It was interesting reading the Revelation Space series’ debut title last. Some parts of the whole felt better before reading it!

It is a fine scifi epic, competently written, although full of signposts to the effect of “this is my debut book” and “this is the world I created”. Some details are just naive and there is far too much exposition, especially toward the end. The closing is somewhat let down by over-explaining things.

In a way I liked the series more before reading this premiere part. Things like the Inhibitors, the Captain and the Caches and much of the characters felt better when you had to piece together the back story from clues. I’m recalling from the English editions here – I read the Finnish edition of Revelation Space, so pardon me if I got the terms incorrectly!

While Reynolds’ technique is not honed yet here, the story is brought to a suitably massive conclusion, with perfectly serviceable tying up of clues in the process.

Even a somewhat clumsy Revelation Space “new” space opera is still delicious. There are neutron stars, cultures destroyed aeons ago, plots spanning a million years, warping of time-space, computer matrixes with the power of gods, old-fashioned violence and cybernetic rats. I couldn’t put the book down for the last hundred pages or so.

Indeed, I feel like maybe I should embark on a re-read of the rest of the series now.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Theme by Justin Winslow | Powered by
WordPress
| Copyright 2007 by Joonas Laakso | you can stand all night / at a red light anywhere in town / hailing marys left and right / but none of them slow down / i've seen the best of them go past / i don't wanna be the last / give me something fast